Many video content websites provide for consumers to watch videos without paying a fee in exchange for being exposed to advertisements. Consumers generally are accepting of such arrangement as long as the advertisement is not overly intrusive to their video experience. For example, a consumer that has to wait too long for a video to begin playing or buffer during playback oftentimes terminates his attempt to play the video. When excessive delay is the result of an advertisement playing, consumers are even more likely to end attempting to play the video. Consequently, excessive wait time to play a video diminishes opportunity to monetize playback of the video with advertisements.